By Sam Schechner in Paris and Jacob Gershman in New York
Google on Tuesday will appeal an order to extend the European
Union's "right to be forgotten" to its search engines across the
globe, arguing before the EU's top court that the order encourages
countries to assert sovereignty beyond their borders.
National laws used to stop at the border. In cyberspace, they
increasingly stretch around the world, as regulators in Europe, the
U.S. and Canada have started asserting legal authority over the
internet across country lines.
That is thrusting global tech firms like Google, Facebook Inc.
and Microsoft Corp. into a potentially costly legal morass, and
setting the stage for conflict over who will -- or should --
regulate everything from free speech and privacy to cybercrime and
taxes.
The Google dispute before the EU's Court of Justice in
Luxembourg is the highest-profile case yet to test where
jurisdiction begins and ends when it comes to data. Google is
appealing a 2015 order from France's privacy regulator, CNIL, to
extend the EU's "right to be forgotten" to all of its websites, no
matter where they are accessed. CNIL fined Google 100,000 euros
($116,295) when it didn't comply.
France argues that the right -- which allows individuals to
request removal of results that include personal information from
searches for their own names -- is empty if it can be dodged by
spoofing one's location, for instance by connecting to a VPN.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., says France's demand risks
allowing the censorship laws of dictators and tyrants to dictate
what people around the world can see online.
"It will set governments' expectations about how they can use
their leverage over internet platforms to effectively enforce their
own laws globally," said Daphne Keller, who studies platforms'
legal responsibilities at the Stanford Center for Internet and
Society and previously was Google's associate general counsel.
At issue in these disputes, experts say, is a fundamental
mismatch between how both laws and the borderless internet each
operate. As regulations proliferate, tech firms risk ending up in a
legal bind no matter which course of action they take, lawyers
say.
Over Google's objections, Canada's highest court last year
ordered the internet giant to globally block search results linking
to commercial websites associated with a company accused in Canada
of stealing trade secrets. A U.S. federal judge later declared that
the Canadian world-wide injunction wasn't enforceable in the U.S.
Google ultimately agreed to comply with the injunction, which
remains in place.
Conflict can also arise when one country's police demand data
from a tech company, but another country's law forbids giving such
data to foreign police. In early 2015, for instance, Brazilian
law-enforcement officials detained a Microsoft executive in São
Paulo after the company refused to produce Skype data of a
Brazilian customer, Microsoft said in a blog post later that year.
The reason: The data was kept in the U.S., and American law at the
time forbid Microsoft from turning it over to foreign law
enforcement, putting the company in a legal bind, the company
said.
"It's a clash between the way data is managed and moved around,
which doesn't respect borders, and efforts by territorial
governments to impose their norms and rules," said Jennifer Daskal,
an American University law professor.
The Google case being heard Tuesday stems from the EU Court of
Justice's landmark ruling in 2014 that created a right to be
forgotten from search engines. The court said that search engines
must honor individuals' requests to remove results, including their
personal information, from searches for their own name. But the
court also said Google must balance those requests against the
public interest in keeping those results linked to that person --
for instance, in the case of public figures.
Google moved quickly to implement the ruling on all the European
versions of its search engine, setting up a request and vetting
process that has so far removed some one million search results in
Europe. In one instance, Google removed links to a 1998 Wall Street
Journal article about tantric sex from the search results of a man
whom the article said had attended a tantra workshop.
If Google complies with the French ruling ordering global
application, the firm risks running up against U.S. free-speech
protections. Content providers could seek U.S. court injunctions to
stop removals, but then Google would face EU privacy fines if it
complies. Under the EU's new privacy law, such fines can rise to as
much as 4% of a company's annual world-wide revenue.
Google declined to comment on what it will do if it loses the
case. A ruling will likely take at least several months. Before the
court rules, one of its advocate generals will issue a nonbinding
opinion in the case.
Google says it will argue that its application of the right to
be forgotten is already effective in France for well over 99% of
searches. More broadly, the company plans to assert that the EU has
an obligation to minimize legal conflict with other jurisdictions.
It also will argue that the right to be forgotten is far from
settled law in many places, such as the U.S., where freedom of
speech usually prevails over privacy concerns.
Google will be joined by several press-freedom groups in its
arguments on Tuesday. One group, Reporters Committee for Freedom of
the Press, says a ruling against Google would have "grave
world-wide consequences."
"There would be nothing to prevent other jurisdictions from
claiming the same global scope of application for their own laws,"
the group wrote in a brief to the court. "The result would be a
'race to the bottom,' as speech prohibited by any one country could
effectively be prohibited for all, on a world-wide basis."
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Jacob
Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 09, 2018 07:14 ET (11:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2024 to May 2024
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2023 to May 2024